seventh world of chan buddhism - Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun

And since their lives depended on it, they studied the testimony of wind and cloud,
raindrop and snowflake, looking always to the four cardinal directions from where the
evidence came. These were the gods to whom they prayed; and they understood perfectly
that they would be saved or damned according to the quaternary will.
In dreams and reveries, or in times of extreme distress and grievous need, or even in
moments of great peace, sitting by their fires at night, they could see the gods of the four
horizons appear as mysteriously as the aurora borealis and ride their splendid horses across
the frozen stars.
And also, during the long nights of their nomadic sojourns, they reverenced the north
god's emissary, Polaris, and the Great Dipper that rotated around it nightly to mark the hour
even as it rotated around itself annually to mark the twelve months of the solar year. They
watched its nightly wheeling in the clear skies of clement weather and saw in its entrancing
spins the ribs of a great protective umbrella. It was their compass, clock, calendar and
benediction.
The only being they recognized as supreme was the sky itself that spanned the four
horizons and embraced their anxious world. And so the immigrants descended into China in
nomadic waves, following their herds and culturally traveling very light. Not much about
them was commendable until, around 2,200 B.C. their society suddenly burst with art and
artifact of a quality worthy to be called Chinese.
Mesopotamia was a well-traveled adult of 2,000-plus when China was born.
The locale of this cultural efflorescence was a northern plain through which the
Yellow River flowed. There, in a landscape colored by ocher dust carried down from
Mongolia in wind and water, the settlers found the paradise necessary to begin a civilization.
The river was the umbilical cord that provided their embryo community with all the
nourishment it needed: fish, waterfowl, clay, transportation and, in that arid region, water
itself. Surrounding fields of wild grasses provided fodder for their animals and cereal grains
for themselves, while nearby forests yielded game, fur bearing animals, nuts, lumber and
firewood. They settled in and called themselves the Hua (prosperous) people. Before long
they were domesticating cattle, pigs, sheep, dogs, goats and chickens and were employing the
potter's wheel to fashion their crockery.
Perhaps the millennia spent upon bleak tundra recesses or in dark, dense pine woods
predisposed them to regard with special reverence the gold and verdant plains and to see as
religious mysteries the gorgeous changings of deciduous trees and perennial plants. The idea
of cyclic return entered their consciousness, never to depart. Whatever waxed, would wane.
Whatever flowed, would ebb. Whatever bloomed would wither. And they intuited
accurately that the phase of decline or demise was integral to the process since it engendered,
CHAPTER 2 CHINA
S EVENTH W ORLD O F C HAN B UDDHISM
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